Ahava is the Hebrew word for love, and it carries a weight that goes far beyond romance.
The root of the word, ahav, appears throughout the Hebrew Bible to describe love between people, love within a family, and the love of God for His people. It is a love bound up with loyalty and action, not only a feeling. To love in the biblical sense is to choose someone, again and again, through devotion that shows itself in what you do.
The root carries some of the Bible’s most memorable moments: Jacob loves Rachel so much that seven years of labor “seemed to him but a few days,” as told in Genesis 29. David and Jonathan are bound by a love that David, in his lament in 2 Samuel, describes as more wonderful than the love of women. The Song of Songs, an entire love poem included in Scripture, is built almost entirely around this root. And the famous command in Leviticus 19:18, “love your neighbor as yourself,” takes the very same word and stretches it beyond a bond between two people, until it becomes a whole way of living.
The root also hides in names and phrases we use every day:
– Ahuv and ahuva, “beloved,” are both names and everyday words that come from the same root
– David, the most famous king in the Bible, carries a name linked to the Hebrew word dod, meaning “beloved”
– “Ahavat chinam,” unconditional love, a phrase made famous by Rabbi Kook as the remedy for the “baseless hatred” said to have caused great national ruin
– “Ahava Rabbah,” one of the central prayers in the siddur, recited every single morning
One small word, and inside it romantic love, love between friends, and the love of God for the world all at once, as if every true love, human or divine, flows from the exact same source.
